"Tell me I do not cause you more pain!" the Emperor exclaimed.
"No," Lisinthir said. "What you feel through your skin is something else."
"It tastes like suffering," the Emperor said, pressing his cheek against Lisinthir's shoulder.
"There are some joys that touch suffering," Lisinthir said. "But they come to that place honestly. Not seeking the suffering, not gloating over it in others."
"And this you underwent out of love for the Slave Queen," the Emperor said.
"I would have done it for anyone who did not deserve death," Lisinthir said. "For anyone." Saying it, peace ran through the cracks in his spirit, smoothing them over. "I love life, Exalted. I serve life."
"I believe you," the Emperor said, voice hushed. His fingers in Lisinthir's tightened, and his words grew raspy. "Tell me, Perfection ... how could you allow this, after all I've done to you?"
"I trusted," Lisinthir said. "I trusted you."
"How could you?" the Emperor asked. "I am who I am."
"You have always kept your word," Lisinthir said.
The Emperor was silent, but his fingers in Lisinthir's stretched and folded and through their skins, Lisinthir felt his ambivalence. Then: "You no longer fear me."
"No," Lisinthir said. "The worst you can do to me, you have done. Madness is escape, and death is release. Both are better alternatives than life in chains." He looked over his shoulder, as far as his eye would permit as he no longer had the energy to lift his head. "Does that mean you will be quit of me?"
The Emperor shook his head. "Enough, Perfection." He tightened his arm over Lisinthir's side, shifted to nestle deeper into the bed. "No more questions. No more testing. For now. You have earned this. If, somehow, you trust me... then sleep here now with me and I will keep you safe."
"I believe you," Lisinthir said simply, and gave up consciousness.
The Slave Queen was surprised to be summoned that night, for she'd assumed the trial would last until dawn, and perhaps past it. But it was no more than three hours before she found herself retracing her steps to the tower and walking, head bowed, between the doors opened for her by the guards.
She found the Emperor slumped on the floor, using the bed as a backrest. In his proper shape, she could barely separate him from the darkness, save by the glint off the claw at his wing's apex as it moved, the glow of his eyes. She walked to him and kneeled, but that seemed too high with him seated on the floor. She bent forward and grasped her knees, stretching her head in front of him.
"He sleeps like one dead," the Emperor said, and the Slave Queen allowed her gaze to flicker toward the huddled shape hidden by the blankets.
"I on the other hand cannot even lie in one place for long before having to move," he said. "I usually sleep without issue. I work my body hard enough. And yet here I am."
He did not seem to invite commentary, so she remained silent.
"A massage," the Emperor said. "That and to help me tend him, for I fear that he is not well despite the Surgeon's aid. Will you do these things for me?"
She blinked, holding her body perfectly still, even her wings taut. When he made no move, spoke no other word, she said, "Do you ask me, Master?"
"Of course," he said.
"Of course," she repeated, weak with astonishment.
He reached for her face, slid his hand beneath her chin and lifted her head by it. "Shall I order you? Will it make you happier?"
"M-master," the Slave Queen said, "I am always glad to serve you."
He rolled onto his stomach there alongside the bed and spread his wings. The position was awkward, but she bent to the task anyway... and found in it more energy and contentment than she thought possible. How long she worked, she did not know... but hours, surely, long enough for her back to ache and her fingers to stiffen. Long enough for her to rise and fetch warm towels to apply to muscles that refused to stop twitching; long enough for her to break for stretching. Still, the Emperor did not doze, but remained alert, staring at the distant wall, at the reflection of his own thoughts.
Their absorption left them prey to surprise when the Ambassador said, "Are you done with learning, then?"
"Never," the Emperor said, catching the Slave Queen's hand in his and turning onto his side.
"And you, lady? Are you done with the sweetness that is this agony?" the Ambassador asked, his voice husky.
She swallowed. "I will not hurt anyone."
"No," he said. "No, I do not think there will be any more pain. Not like that."
How grave he looked... and how gaunt. How could a single evening, not even three hours, draw all the color and vibrancy from his pale skin?
"Teach me," the Emperor said.
The Ambassador reached for her then, and she met him halfway, letting him thread his fingers through her free ones. "What do you call the Slave Queen? Your pet?"
"It has been the name I've called her," the Emperor said.
"Am I mistaken in understanding it?" the Ambassador asked. "Our language experts are not so expert as they would like. "Pet" is one step above slave, one step sideways from "female.""
"You have the feel," the Emperor said.
He looked at her then with his dusky eyes. "Will you Change for us, lady?"
The Emperor's face swung to hers. Before she could look at him, before she could lose her will, she tucked her head down.
Was it pride that left both her hands in theirs? She could Change without balling her mass into as compact a space as possible, and she did, though it hurt. When she lifted her head again, she met her Emperor's eyes with alien ones, and saw the realization that made him grow so very still. He was not stupid.
"You," he said. "It was you. On the court floor, beneath my hands. While the slaves escaped, it was you I tortured."
"Yes, Master," the Slave Queen said.
"Whose idea was this?" the Emperor asked, looking from her to the Ambassador.
"Hers," the Ambassador said. "And mine. But mostly hers."
"So long ago, before you even knew him. Before you welcomed his body into your own. Before you understood the depth of his power," the Emperor said. "Even then, you conspired with him against me? An alien freak?"
She began to tremble at the words, for it took her some time to remember that the feelings she felt through her fingertips were not just hers, but the Ambassador's wary concern and the Emperor's... the Emperor's as well. The Emperor's undecipherable feelings.
"Yes," she said.
"And you did not compel her," the Emperor said, looking up at the Ambassador.
"No," the Ambassador said. "There are more ways to gain the cooperation of others than by force."
"And this is the Alliance way," the Emperor said. He frowned, thought-lost. "It works."
From the sharp surprise that stung her fingertips, the Ambassador had not expected him to make that connection. His voice did not reflect his worry. "See then, this person you have dismissed as your pet."
The Emperor nodded. "She needs a new name."
"Master?" the Slave Queen said, astonished.
""Pet" demeans her," the Ambassador agreed. "What of what you called her when first we met? Your treasure?"
"Ah, that is not much better," the Emperor said as the Slave Queen watched in disbelief. "That is also a word applied only to objects. But Treasure on the other hand... did your impoverished translators ever scribe the nuance of that word? Or did they miss it, along with the differences between beauty and Beauty?"
"Enlighten me," the Ambassador said, and through his fingertips she felt his amusement.
"A Treasure is irreplaceable," the Emperor said. "A gift of which you are not deserving."
"Still an object," the Ambassador said.
"No," the Emperor said, shaking his head. "You must think as we do. Speak completely with our tongue. For us, an abstraction is not the same as an object. In your language, you use the same referents for it. In ours, they are different. Nothing is lower than an object. Nothing is high
er than an abstraction."
"Ah!" the Ambassador said, radiating his pleasure. "Then I approve. She may be your Treasure. And I am your Beauty."
"My Perfection," the Emperor said, solemn-dark through his fingers, rich and content and deep. "You have Changed. Or I have."
"And I shall call you—"
"Master!" the Emperor said, laughing.
"And for that I shall pummel you!" the Ambassador said, lifting himself as if to lunge off the bed.
The Emperor held up his crossed arms, still laughing. "Shield me from the mighty Ambassador, so weak from his trial that he is too slow to surprise me!"
The Ambassador snorted. "Alas, you speak truth." He squeezed the Slave Queen's fingers. "But there are more pleasant distractions. For instance... we have never taken her this way."
"The Surgeon did recommend normal sex," the Emperor said. "I suppose tumbling an alien-shaped Chatcaavan counts."
"But only a willing one," the Ambassador said, looking into her eyes. Through his fingers, he sent his gentle concern. "Lady?"
Through her other hand, an amazing blend of laughter, curiosity and wonder.
How had he brought them to this? To take her from object to abstraction in a matter of months... to make her own use a matter of choice.
A matter of delight.
"Oh yes," she said, and opened her arms to them both.
And then the days began to stream past, inseparable, hour into hour, moment into moment.
—breathing into the Slave Queen's Eldritch hair, holding her palms against his.
"Do you regret this?"
Her happiness, her sorrow, coiled together like serpents—
Lisinthir supposed that weeks passed. Some part of him remembered he had official chambers. An official capacity. Duties. A neglected data tablet, probably overflowing with mail.
—getting tangled in blankets and laughing about it, laughing while nipping and tugging and passing the hekkret—
God and Lady knew what the Alliance made of his silence. He should tell them he lived.
—"And that star is the heart of the way," the Emperor said.
"An ancient constellation?" Lisinthir asked, one arm behind his head, the other twisting in the Emperor's mane.
"A new one," the Emperor said. "It points the way to the home-world."—
He wondered if Second knew where they were.
He wondered that he could not lift himself apart from this intoxication, this beauty, this perfection.
He wondered if his plan was working, or not, and could not remember which he hoped for.
—kissing an open mouth
claw-tips tickling his throat
trust in the arms of dragons—
"If he continues like this, someone will kill him," the Slave Queen whispered.
"I know," Lisinthir replied.
"His replacement will probably discount all this as perversity, strange interest in the pleasures of alien flesh," the Slave Queen said into his ear. "He will want no war."
"Then we will all be safe," Lisinthir said, and despaired.
"No pain," the Slave Queen said, though through the body she pressed along his length with such helpless desire he felt her equally helpless grief.
"No."
"No deaths."
"Only one," Lisinthir said.
"No change," she said, resting her head against his chest. He felt her ribs heave. "Why? Why can we not have both?"
"This path will lead to no good end," he said. "Didn't you tell me so yourself?"
"That was before," she whispered. "Before I was Treasure and you were Perfection and he was... was Greatness. Why can't we have this forever?"
"No one lives forever," Lisinthir said, and kissed her to silence the thoughts that her skin begged him to smother.
Summer was near to failing the day the Slave Queen sought the Ambassador and could not find him. He was not stretched out in bed beside the sleeping Emperor nor in the deepest suite. She had to progress nearly to the door before she heard the sound of sickness in the water closet that served the receiving room.
She ran to him, and he leaped up to shut the door but she was swifter, swift enough to bar the door and see the blood dripping down his throat, his ruddy lips, and the streaks across the toilet's surface that married them. Aghast, she exclaimed, "/My lord!/"
He backed away, smearing the drops over his mouth and turning his face from hers. "I did not intend you to see this."
She reached to him, but something in his manner stopped her short of touching. "The Surgeon—"
"Don't," the Ambassador said, voice harsh. He took in a long breath. "Don't call him. I have been through this before. It will pass."
"It looks fell to me," she whispered. "Are you—"
"No," he said before she could say it. Dying. "No, only poisoned."
"Poisoned!"
He slumped over the sink, hair sliding over his shoulders to shield his face. "Every few nights now. If we are at supper, the cup is poisoned. His cup. Our cup." His head dipped forward, as if too heavy to be borne. "Someone seeks to upset the order of power."
"The court has turned," she whispered, sinking to her knees. In her breast her heart trembled, as if it had forgotten how to beat to a single rhythm.
"No," he said, threading his hair behind one ear. He swallowed, and she saw now not just his throat, but the frailty of his flesh. The translucence of his skin, so thin she could see his pulse fluttering on his neck. How easy it would be to kill him. "Understand, lady. They are using hekkret. I recognize the taste."
Was that her gasp? She barely recognized her own voice. "You. They seek to kill you."
"I do not suspect a "they,"" the Ambassador said. "But a "who.""
There was no question who would make such an attempt.
"Will you kill him?" she asked in a small voice.
He shook his head, no longer looking at her. His gaze had gone distant. "Not without proof. I am far gone into this life, lady, but not so far as that. Not so far as that."
Now she dared to touch him, to run her fingers over the hard ribs and feel the depth of the depressions between them, the tautness of the skin that stretched to cover them. "Does he know? The Emperor?"
"I don't know," the Ambassador said. "Does it matter? If he knew, what would it accomplish?"
"It would save your life!" she exclaimed, tail twitching with the agitation she fought to suppress. "He would speak with Second—"
"I smoke the hekkret to keep from dying of poison," the Ambassador said. "It works. There is no need to foment chaos over something that among Chatcaava would raise brows only in contempt."
"You cannot fear Second," she said. "You could kill him easily."
He laughed. "Not so easily as that."
"But you could," she pressed.
"I won't." Rough, hoarse. Then softer, "It would change things. I don't want things to change." The tension in his body drained out of it, and limp he drooped to the floor beside her. He put his face in his hands. "Somehow I have come here, to this. This now, this forever. Oh, lady. Everything has changed."
She uncoiled, padded to him on her hands and knees. She pressed her face against his shoulder until he uncurled, cupped her cheek in one hand. Strange to notice now how much longer the fingers were than a Chatcaavan's. Strange now to notice how hot they were. After months of accepting the differences, why did she now catalogue them with such clarity? Why did it seem so important?
"Don't die," she said, smelling blood and sickness in his mouth.
"Not yet," he said.
Two more afternoons passed, each one more precious, more breathless than the last. The nausea receded, as he knew it would, and blood did not stain his lips again. The three of them were intertwined when someone knocked on the distant door hard enough to be heard all the way into the bedchamber. The Emperor lifted a draconic head to stare past the curtains of the bed.
"I will answer it, Master," the Slave Queen said and slid from their nest. L
isinthir remained where he was, lazily curled with his back to the Emperor's side. The dragon was playing with his hair, as he seemed wont to do; Chatcaavan manes were not so silky, or so heavy.
The Slave Queen did not immediately return, and the first prick of unease disturbed Lisinthir's contentment. Still, somehow, despite all the evidence that led to this inevitability, he did not expect to see Second appear at the entrance to the bedchamber, the Slave Queen cringing in his wake.
"So the rumors are all true," Second said. "You have reneged on your responsibilities in favor of play with your toys."
"I don't recall ever doing such a thing," the Emperor said without heat.
"You have not visited with the military for months," Second said. "You have not asked to see my list of concessions to this scaleless freak in even longer. The court is growing restless in your absence and you barely appear to show them their place, even at so trivial a function as dinner. There are worlds in our Empire that now consider the possibility of tossing off their yokes, and still you lie abed, letting some wingless freak suck the seed out of your body. You are not the male I stayed here to serve!"
"I don't like your tone, Second," the Emperor said. "I gave you your place. I can take it away."
"Then try," Second hissed. "I challenge you as unfit to rule. If you have any strength, any honor left at all, you will come to the Field and meet me there."
Before any of them could respond, Second turned, wings rattling, and marched out of the room. Lisinthir watched him go with a dry mouth, feeling through his skin the cold shock that crystallized all the Emperor's thoughts.
"Don't go," Lisinthir said.
The Emperor was already sliding off the bed. "Don't be ridiculous."
"He is only Second. His opinion of you is meaningless!"
"He is the only male I've trusted in all my life," the Emperor said. "He deserves to be answered."
"Most Exalted—"
"—Emperor, yes? That's how you finish that phrase," the Emperor snapped. "If my own Second, who has followed me so long, sees fit to challenge my fitness for the role, then he will be answered. I will not look away from a fight."
The Emperor finished pulling on his robe and turned to the Slave Queen, framing her narrow face in his hands. "You. You remember the commands I gave you when first I took you twenty-five revolutions past."
Even the Wingless Page 39
